Putting Your Website Marketing Campaign Together

There are many ways to develop your website, depending on your needs, goals and budget. Honestly, I'm certain we all have a friend or relative that has put some type of web page together at some point in time. Throwing something on the web isn't rocket science. BUT.... when it involves your business and your website marketing campaign as a whole, the real process should be more involved. Depending on your needs, your website may require various skills. Discuss internally what you feel you would like to achieve with your website and make notes. Your web development gurus or internal marketing team should be able to offer many suggestions and tips along the way.

Delving into the process......

The Skills and Technology Involved In Your Website Development & Marketing Campaign

Planning:
A good website marketing campaign requires good planning on the part of you and your website development team. Some smaller "brochure" type sites require less planning, but even the smaller, most simple websites usually still have a goal of being seen, selling a product/service, increasing sales and brand awareness and so on. Let it be known, if you build it- they will not always come. There is no magic worldwide website fairy that will throw you on top of Google and yahoo. Good content will help tremendously, and that is where good planning comes into play.

Copywriting/creative writing:
Unless you have a department that handles your creative writing, this is left for "someone else", or goes untouched. Conveying your message clearly isn't always easy. Let your web guru know up front if you are expecting them to handle your creative writing needs.

Website design:
Creating and manipulating images into a layout for the web, including arranging color schemes and aesthetic features of your website.

Website designers are a dime a dozen realistically. In fact, we see new website design companies startup everyday. Unfortunately, it seems the schools these days are charging big bucks to teach designers, but barely going into the much needed 'development' stage. "Pretty" is nice and everything, but if you are sight impaired or a search engine spider- all the nice design may be wasted while you sit and wonder why you have poor search engine rankings and thus, no one is visiting your site.

The design of your site has many points to consider as this medium is not the same as print design. There is more than just aesthetics, as development for the web has many considerations.

Your website should be viewable to all newer mainstream browsers, and also look good in a text browser. If search engine ranking is a goal, make sure that your designer is doing everything that they can do to help and is aware of the process involved. Search engines cannot read flash content very well. This, and many more factors should be understood before you decide how to design your website.

Website programming:
Looking for a shopping cart to sell your product on the Internet? What if you have a lot of images or products to display? Maybe your company would benefit from a content management system (CMS). The possibilities are endless, but what is the right approach? This goes back to planning, and taking into consideration your present and future needs. Make sure your web development team knows of any future plans of website development so they can build with your goals and needs in mind from the start.

Search engine optimization and achieving top search engine rankings:
Whoa.. did someone say you could be the number one widget seller by putting up a website? Let's lay the cards out on the table. ...there are ways to succeed in marketing your website- and search engines can be a great tool for a lot of businesses. Your website development team will have to research your competition, key phrases and plan your website coding and design to be seen by search engines as relevant. On more competitive search terms, It can be expected to put about %50 of your website marketing time into building your link popularity.

Beware of those that guarantee you a top spot on the search engine rankings. If it was something we could guarantee- everyone would be at the top of the list, which is not possible. Good search engine rankings can usually be achieved by having good, relevant content within your site- and smart design with a lot of attention to your link campaign. It's also a very good idea to use other means of advertising to drive traffic to your website such as PPC advertising such as Google Adwords. Also remember that all website marketing campaigns have different needs -depending on goals and budget, along with the competitiveness of your market.

Website hosting or secure Server co-location:
Hosting your website with a reliable and economical host is usually a plus when it comes to your website marketing campaign. With all the options, it's easy for some to get confused- or select a web host that ends up being a nightmare and time drain. A good web development team will be able to help you with different hosting options based on your budget and needs.

Managed email services:
If you already have a website, there is no valid reason to be using a generic or free email address like hotmail.com or AOL.com for your business. If you are just starting your website- make sure to talk to your ISP, or web development team if need be and route your email through your business URL. A spam/junkmail reduction plan is also a must on the ISP level.

Website maintenance:
Once it is built, will it stay the same for years to come? Make sure to allow for website maintenance in your project's budget. Even changing little areas or providing new information from time to time can help keep your website from being stagnant. This also can encourage new clients and activity from existing clients if done correctly.

There are various other skills that can come to play when designing and developing a custom website to fit your needs. When it's time to troubleshoot a problem- it's usually your internal IT team, ISP, web developer or vendor support department that is called. Sometimes it's all of the above. When dealing with issues such as Hosting, email and DNS- combined with eCommerce integration, search engine ranking goals and website accessibility- the process can get convoluted and confusing once again. If you don't have a budget for internal staffing to cover all areas, the ideal solution for most is to find a one stop web development shop that can assist with all of the above and anything else that creeps up.

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